Development of Clay Tile Coatings for Steep-Sloped Cool Roofs

Tactical urban pocket parks (TUPPs) for subjective and objective multi-domain comfort enhancement

Cities face growing anthropogenic overheating phenomena, such as Urban Heat Island Effect and more intense and frequent heatwaves, impacting livability and wellbeing of local citizens and tourists. To mitigate such effects, passive mitigation strategies have been widely studied in the past decades, to be integrated within the built environment. The insertion of green areas, i.e. parks, in urban areas is among the most common passive strategies, however it presents numerous challenges, as traditional parks are difficult to insert in an existing packed urban texture. Hence, in this study, we examine the significance of strategic small urban parks related to various construction types. These parks can be seamlessly integrated through tactical urbanism interventions to enhance both the objective and subjective perception of overall comfort. By coupling human-centric microclimate monitoring campaigns in the small parks and surrounding blocks (objective analysis) with questionnaire surveys to parks' users (subjective multidomain analysis) we aim at assessing their effectiveness. Results show that Tactical Urban Pocket Parks (TUPP) can slightly improve objective whole comfort and significantly enhance the improvement of subjective comfort (from neutral/bad to good/very good).

Preparation and Properties of New Thermal Reflective Coating for Asphalt Pavement

This paper aims to study the applicability of an epoxy resin modification to improve its anti-aging properties, which are conducive to road performance. To achieve this goal, a wide range of laboratory activities were conducted, including an emulsion mixed with epoxy resin and liquid phenolic resin as the coating substrate; surface-modified titanium dioxide, silica, hollow glass beads and sericite powder as functional fillers; then adding pigments and various additives to prepare a new asphalt pavement heat-reflective coating. Secondly, the optimum brushing amount of the coating was obtained, and the cooling effect was clarified. Finally, the road performance was evaluated by testing the coating's skid resistance, wear resistance and impermeability. The results show that the skid resistance, abrasion resistance and impermeability of the heat reflection coating meet the specification requirements.

Cool Surface Strategies with an Emphasis on the Materials Dimension: A Review

The need to tackle the urban heat island effect demands the implementation of cool surfaces as a mitigation strategy. This study comprehensively reviews the evolution of this research field from a materials perspective. It provides a bibliometric analysis of the relevant literature using the SciMAT software processing of bibliographic records from 1995 to 2020, for the evolution of cool surfaces. The results obtained show an increased interest in the field from 2011 to 2020, particularly for roof applications, and present the scientific evolution of reflective materials. According to the materials dimension adopted by the development of the research field, the study is refined from a bibliometric analysis of 982 selected records for the analysis of five themes: (i) Pigments; (ii) Phase change materials; (iii) Retroreflective materials; (iv) Ceramic materials; and (v) Glass. These materials present promising results in terms of their solar reflectance performances in the mitigation of the urban heat island phenomenon. At the end of this review, recommendations for future studies are provided for the creation of economic and environmentally friendly materials based on waste glass recycling. This study represents a valuable contribution that provides a scientific background with regard to cool surfaces from a materials perspective for future investigations.